Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  “A night flight, Sunday night, would be better,” said Ike.

  “A night flight? Why?” asked the president.

  Daylight flights were too risky, Eisenhower explained. “We don’t want to have to run fighter escort all the way to Cairo. It would just be asking for trouble.”

  “Okay, Ike. You’re the boss. But I get something in return.”

  “What’s that, Sir?”

  “If you’re going to make me stay over at Carthage all Sunday, you’ve got to take me on a personally conducted tour of the battlefields—ancient and modern.”

  “That’s a bargain, Sir.”50

  The one-day briefing turned into a two-day lovefest. FDR and Ike were both engaging extroverts, and they hit it off from the beginning. Roosevelt was accustomed to being the center of attention; Eisenhower was equally accustomed to dealing with celebrities such as Churchill and MacArthur, and knew instinctively how to make them comfortable.

  “Where is Miss Summersby?” the president asked as soon as he was settled in Ike’s quarters. Eisenhower sent for Kay, and introduced her.

  “Mr. President, this is Miss Kay Summersby, the British girl you asked about.”

  “I’ve heard quite a bit about you,” FDR told Kay. “Why didn’t you drive me from the plane? I’d been looking forward to it.”

  “Mr. President, your Secret Service wouldn’t let me drive.”

  “Would you like to drive me from now on?” Roosevelt asked.

  “It would be a privilege, Sir.”

  “Very well. You shall drive me then. I’m going on an inspection trip soon.”51

  At dinner that evening Kay sat one place from the president.i “I was exposed to the fabled F.D.R. charm,” she remembered. “He had it on full, with all stops out.” Roosevelt took his leave at ten-thirty. “See you tomorrow, Child,” he said to Summersby, in a tone she had not heard since she was a girl.52

  The next morning Roosevelt, his son Franklin, Eisenhower, and Summersby, joined by Telek, the Scottie Ike and Kay shared, set out in Ike’s staff car to tour the battlefields. According to Franklin, his father grilled Ike closely, not only about the recent battles but also those of ancient Carthage. “The fact that Ike knew the details of each conflict pleased Father hugely: it showed that Ike, like Father, had a bent for history, and a love for knowledge.”53

  Scarcely had the tour begun when Telek jumped onto the president’s lap. Nothing could have been better calculated to put FDR at ease. “The President played with him as one who knows and loves dogs,” said Summersby. Roosevelt talked about Fala, and asked whether Telek was British or American. Eisenhower allowed as how he was British, but had an American wife. “I guess I think as much of him, Mr. President, as you do of Fala.”54

  A little after noon, Roosevelt spotted a rare eucalyptus grove, an oasis in the desert landscape. “That’s an awfully nice place. Could you pull up there, Child, for our little picnic?” When the car came to a stop, surrounded by squads of GIs with fixed bayonets, Kay opened the picnic basket.

  “No, let me do that, Kay, I’m very good at passing sandwiches around,” said Ike.

  Eisenhower got out of the car, went to the front passenger seat, and selected a chicken sandwich for the president.55 Ike claimed he knew his chicken sandwiches because of all the Sunday-school picnics he had gone to as a child.56

  Ike and FDR review the troops in Algiers. (illustration credit 12.1)

  Before biting in, Roosevelt turned to Kay. He patted the empty seat beside him and said, “Won’t you come back here, Child, and have lunch with a dull old man?”57

  “Roosevelt enjoyed himself immensely,” Summersby recalled. “He had a gift of putting a person completely at ease, and I soon got over my awe of him and was chatting away as if I had known him all my life.”58 j

  No one appreciated a picnic more than FDR. When he was at Hyde Park, whenever he could escape from matters of state, he loved to go off for long picnics with his cousin Margaret (“Daisy”) Suckley, or with Eleanor and her friends at Val-Kill. Roosevelt relished the company of pretty, attentive women, and flirting with them was one of his favorite pastimes. The brief sojourn with Kay in the desert was no exception.59

  When they returned to Eisenhower’s quarters late that afternoon, FDR was beaming. He leaned over and put his hand on Ike’s arm. “You know, Ike—I’m afraid I’m going to have to do something you won’t like.

  “I know what Harry Butcher is to you [but] I may have to take him away.” The president explained that Elmer Davis was leaving his post as director of the Office of War Information, and had recommended Butcher as his successor. “What would you say if I drafted ‘Butch’ to take over the job?” asked Roosevelt.

  “Well, Mr. President, I won’t pretend it wouldn’t be tough. But if you need him, if you give the word, the answer is, sure, go ahead.”

  According to Franklin junior, “Father paused, with a very satisfied look on his face. It was the sort of answer he liked, and he was bound to like Eisenhower the more for it, especially inasmuch as he knew what losing Butcher would mean to the General.”60

  That evening after dinner, Eisenhower accompanied FDR to the airport. Just before the president boarded the plane, he mentioned the command of OVERLORD—which evidently he had been thinking about.

  Ike, you and I know who was the Chief of Staff during the last years of the Civil War but practically no one else knows, although the names of the field generals—Grant, of course, and Lee, and Jackson, Sherman, Sheridan and the others—every schoolboy knows them. I hate to think that 50 years from now practically nobody will know who George Marshall was. That is one of the reasons why I want George to have the Big Command—he is entitled to establish his place in history as a great General.61

  FDR went on to say that he dreaded the thought of losing Marshall from Washington. “It is dangerous to monkey with a winning team.”62

  Roosevelt was thinking out loud. Marshall was the logical choice to command OVERLORD, and it was generally assumed that he would do so.k Stimson and Hopkins vigorously endorsed the chief of staff, and both Churchill and Stalin believed it was only a matter of time until Roosevelt announced the choice.

  But FDR was having second thoughts. General John J. Pershing, who knew both Marshall and Eisenhower, had written from his sickbed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to caution the president against sending Marshall to London. The command structures in Washington and overseas were working well, said Pershing. “It would be a fundamental and very grave error in our military policy to break up working relationships at both levels.”63

  Marshall’s colleagues on the Joint Chiefs also voiced concern. Leahy, King, and Arnold believed it essential to retain Marshall as a member of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, where he could fight for American interests. “None of us, least of all myself, wanted to deny Marshall the thing he wanted most,” wrote Leahy. “On the other hand, he was a tower of strength to Roosevelt and to the high command.”64

  FDR was also concerned about recent press criticism suggesting that Marshall’s transfer to Europe was a left-wing plot to elevate General Brehon Somervell to chief of staff and possibly position him as a running mate in 1944. Somervell, who had headed the WPA in New York under Hopkins, was considered an ardent New Dealer (which surely would have astonished Somervell), and more in sympathy with FDR’s domestic agenda than Marshall. Above all, however, there was the problem of dealing with Congress, which after the 1942 midterm election had become increasingly difficult. Most members of Congress believed George Marshall could do no wrong, and FDR wondered whether a new chief of staff would enjoy similar credibility on Capitol Hill.65

  On the other side of the ledger, Roosevelt had just subjected Eisenhower to the most searching scrutiny and liked what he saw. Unlike Lincoln, who was prone to error until he found Grant in 1863, FDR was exceptionally able at selecting military commanders (Marshall, MacArthur, Leahy, King), and he believed Ike would be a good fit to head the cross-Channel attack. The jo
b was Marshall’s if he wanted it, but Eisenhower seemed to have all the necessary qualifications. He had proven his ability to command large multinational coalitions, he worked well with the British high command in London, and he had demonstrated a particular ability to underplay American special interests for the benefit of the common cause—an essential attribute that Marshall may have lacked. Roosevelt was not a friend of detail and did not pursue matters to the third decimal place. The landings in North Africa, Sicily, and at Salerno may not have been textbook examples of military precision, but Ike had prevailed. (Shiloh and the Wilderness were not pretty, either.) As a result of those landings, Eisenhower had a firsthand knowledge of amphibious operations that Marshall did not have.

  FDR also liked Ike. Not only was he easy to get along with, but he exhibited none of the posturing that often accompanied high rank in the military. Ike might just be the man for the job, Roosevelt thought as he boarded his plane for Cairo. But he wanted a second look. He ordered Eisenhower to join the conference in Cairo “in two or three days” and report on the situation in the Mediterranean.66

  Eisenhower took off for Cairo on Tuesday evening, November 23. As a thoughtful gesture, he invited the president’s son Colonel Elliott Roosevelt and FDR’s son-in-law, Major John Boettiger, to accompany him. Elliott commanded the theater’s photo reconnaissance group, and Boettiger, former publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was attached to Allied military government in Italy. He and his wife, Anna, had been friends of the Eisenhowers since Ike was stationed at Fort Lewis in 1940. In addition to Elliott and Boettiger, Eisenhower’s party included Kay Summersby, his personal staff, and the theater commanders in chief.

  The Cairo conference (SEXTANT) was the most acrimonious wartime meeting of the Allied chiefs. Despite the agreement at Quebec, Churchill had become increasingly opposed to a cross-Channel attack and was obsessed with taking the island of Rhodes. Turkey, he argued, could be induced to join the Allies, and the key to Turkish participation was the capture of Rhodes. “I can control him [Churchill] no more,” General Sir Alan Brooke lamented in his diary. “He has worked himself into a frenzy over the Rhodes attack, so that he can no longer see anything else and has set his heart on capturing the island even at the expense of endangering his relations with the President and the Americans.”67

  The issue exploded at the meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff attended by Roosevelt and Churchill on November 24, 1943. The prime minister and Marshall went head-to-head. As Marshall recalled, “It got hotter and hotter. Finally Churchill grabbed his lapels, his spit curls hung down, and he said, ‘His Majesty’s Government can’t have its troops standing idle. Muskets must flame.’ ”

  “God forbid if I should try to dictate,” Marshall replied. “But not one American soldier is going to die on that goddamned beach.”68

  The meeting was stunned. Marshall carried the point, but Churchill never completely forgave him.69 When Elliott called on his father later that morning, he found FDR still musing about the exchange. “I think Winston is beginning not to like George Marshall very much.”70

  “I wouldn’t envy anybody the job of standing up to the P.M.,” said Elliott.

  “Well, I’ll tell you one man who deserves a medal for being able to get along with Winston. And that’s Ike Eisenhower.”

  Elliott asked his father if he was serious about giving Eisenhower a medal.

  “Sure I am. But he won’t take one. At the same time MacArthur was given the Medal of Honor, it was offered to Ike, and he turned it down. Said it was for valor, and he hadn’t done anything valorous.”l

  Elliott replied that Bedell Smith had told him that Eisenhower would really like to have the Legion of Merit. It was a medal that anyone could get, even an Army cook, but Ike had never received one.

  “Could we keep it a secret?” asked FDR.

  “I don’t know why not.”

  “Good. Get a message to Smith. Have him draw up a citation—North African campaign, Sicilian campaign. If he can get a medal here in time, I’ll pin it on Ike myself, before we leave for Teheran.”71

  A report from Eisenhower was not on the original agenda drawn up by the Combined Chiefs, but since he was in Cairo they asked him to report at their final session on November 26. Minutes before the meeting Ike was summoned to the president’s villa. The medal had arrived from Smith in Algiers, and FDR wanted to award it. “It was just the kind of surprise he loved to spring,” Elliott recalled.

  In the brief ceremony, which came as a total surprise to Eisenhower, the president glowed with admiration. “You deserve this, and much more, Ike.”

  Eisenhower’s eyes filled with tears. “It is the happiest moment of my life, Sir. I appreciate this decoration more than any other you could give me.”72

  Eisenhower’s presentation to the Combined Chiefs that afternoon was a measured assessment of the military situation in Italy. If the CCS provided the resources necessary, he said he could reach the Po River by spring. But that would delay OVERLORD by several months. Without additional resources, he could take Rome, but then would have to assume a defensive posture. Unlike his sophomoric presentation to the Combined Chiefs at Casablanca, where he lost points by recommending an unfeasible war games solution to the problem in Tunisia, Eisenhower demonstrated a firm grasp of the strategic situation and appeared realistic about the possibilities. Asked by Brooke about the situation in Yugoslavia, Ike said that Allied propaganda to the contrary, all possible equipment “should be sent to Tito, since Mihailovic’s forces were of very little value.”73

  FDR presents Ike with the Legion of Merit in Cairo. (illustration credit 12.2)

  The chiefs were impressed with Eisenhower’s presentation.74 But Marshall noticed Ike looked tired. He was working too hard and needed to take some time off. Eisenhower said there was too much work waiting for him back in Algiers. “Look, Eisenhower,” Marshall replied, “everything is going well. Just let someone else run that war up there for a couple of days. If your subordinates can’t do it for you, you haven’t organized them properly.”75

  Given what was in essence an order, Eisenhower had no choice. At the suggestion of Air Chief Marshal Tedder, he flew up the Nile to Luxor to visit the Valley of the Kings, the Pyramids, and the great temple at Karnak. “General Ike was happy as a kid,” Kay Summersby remembered, “making no attempt to hide his natural enjoyment, protesting frequently that we moved along too quickly.”76 From Egypt, Ike and Kay, accompanied by Tex Lee and several WACs, flew to Palestine, lunched at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, visited Bethlehem, and walked in the Garden of Gethsemane. According to Summersby, “a stroll in the Garden of Gethsemane was the high point of the visit. None of the Christ’s long ago agony communicated itself to us; it seemed, rather, more peaceful than the other religious landmarks we visited, a place where meditation seemed natural.”77

  Eisenhower’s affection for Kay had become increasingly evident. Years later Churchill remembered how miffed Ike had been when Summersby was not included among the dinner guests slated to dine with him at the British embassy in Cairo.78 And when FDR returned to Washington after Teheran, he told his daughter, Anna, that he thought Ike was sleeping with Kay.m Eisenhower also left a discreet paper trail. Whether he and Kay were intimate remains a matter of conjecture. But there is no question they were in love. On the return night flight to Algiers he presented Kay with a postcard of the Garden of Gethsemane inscribed, “Good night! There are lots of things I could say—you know them. Good night.”79

  At Teheran it was apparent that FDR was having second thoughts about naming Marshall supreme commander. It was the first meeting of the Big Three, and Roosevelt had gone to Teheran determined to strike up a working relationship with Marshal Stalin. “He is not going to allow anything to interfere with that purpose,” said Harry Hopkins, who had become Roosevelt’s principal diplomatic troubleshooter. “He has spent his life managing men, and Stalin at bottom could not be so very much different from other people.”80

>   The first meeting of the Big Three convened at 4 p.m., Sunday, November 28, 1943, in the conference room of the Soviet embassy, which had been especially fitted with a large round table to preempt any question of who would sit at its head. As the only head of state, Roosevelt presided, and would continue to do so throughout the conference. Informality prevailed. There was no formal agenda, and Roosevelt carried no briefing books or position papers. The issues he wanted to discuss were political, and the president steered his own course.

  The principal issue at Teheran was the second front. Stalin pressed the point. “If we are here to discuss military matters, Russia is only interested in OVERLORD.”81 Churchill dissembled. Unwilling to accept the reality of a cross-Channel attack, the prime minister extolled the advantages of alternative approaches—Italy, Turkey, Rhodes—and the shortage of landing craft, which was indeed a problem. Roosevelt came down hard on Stalin’s side. “We are all agreed that OVERLORD is the dominating operation, and that any operation that might delay OVERLORD cannot be considered by us.”82 The president said he favored sticking to the original date agreed on at Quebec, early May 1944. Stalin replied that he didn’t care whether it was May 1 or May 15 or May 20. “But a definite date is important.”83

  Stalin then turned to FDR. “Who will command OVERLORD?” Roosevelt was caught off guard. “That old Bolshevik is trying to force me to give him a name,” the president whispered to Admiral Leahy, “but I can’t tell him because I haven’t made up my mind.”84

  After the translation of Stalin’s remarks, Roosevelt replied that the matter was not yet decided. “Then nothing will come out of these operations,” said Stalin. The Soviet Union had learned that in military matters decisions could not be made by committee. “One man must be responsible and one man must make decisions.”85 Stalin said the Soviet Union did not presume that it would take part in the selection of a supreme commander, but merely wanted to know who this officer would be and felt strongly that he should be appointed as soon as possible. Churchill said he thought the choice should be made “within a fortnight,” to which Roosevelt agreed.